Best Olympic Moment Not Involving Michael Phelps

The Olympics were two of the greatest weeks of 2008 and there were dozens of amazing moments ranging from the incredible Opening Ceremonies to the unforgettable I Love Beijing theme song. There were so many great moments this year it’s hard to choose just one that stands out. Ok, that’s a lie. There’s one moment that was far better than any other and is, quite frankly, the greatest moment in aquatic sports history. The Justie for the Best Olympic Moment Not Involving Michael Phelps goes to Jason Lezak’s amazing comeback in the 4×100 relay which won the USA a gold and created one hell of a story. There has never been a comeback quite like that nor has there been an instance of shear determination. Way to go Lezak, way to go.

Greatest Thing on TV

All in all, it’s been a pretty crappy year for TV. The Writers Strike cut a lot of seasons short and seemed to affect the quality of TV for this season as well. So the pool to draw from here is obviously pretty slim. But there were some stand outs. The Office and 30 Rock have been stellar and new shows Fringe and Life on Mars have been entertaining. But one show has been better than the rest, so the Justie for Greatest Thing on TV goes to Chuck. Chuck is consistently entertaining and just quirky enough to be endearing but it was “Chuck Verses Tom Sawyer” that pulled it in. Twin Galaxies, arcade games and Rush? Can’t get much better than that.

Best Unintentional Use of Keywords to Drive in Search Engine Traffic

People search for funny things on the internet. Some people spend tons of money and time trying to figure out the best combination of Julianne Hough, Will Smith, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, the Jonas Brothers and Wil Wheaton to get their search engine ranking high enough for people to notice. Around here I do things a little different. I write things and then see how people find them. If a Miley Cyrus mention gets slipped in, well, so be it. It was earlier this year while perusing my site logs that I came across this category’s winner. The Justie for Best Unintentional Use of Keywords to Drive in Search Engine Traffic goes to this post about Chinese food and Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I’ll let you figure out what people were searching for.

Crappiest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me

A lot of crappy things happened in 2008 including hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, fires and a new Rambo movie. I jumped off a cliff and blacked out in the water, but I’m exempt from this category for obvious reasons. No, there was one crappy thing that unfortunately deserves this Justie; the Crappiest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me Justie goes to the economy. Sure, I’m affected indirectly, but whatever. The economy pretty much sucked this year and have put hundreds of thousands out of work. Unfortunately it looks like it may get worse before it gets better but one thing is for certain, it will get better. Here’s to hoping that the economy earns the 2009 Justie for the Greatest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me.

Most Addicting Social Media Outlet

Hello my name is Justin and I’m a social media addict. This year there were plenty of social media sites begging to earn an addiction: Facebook, Shelfari, Strands, and Last.fm just to name a few. But there was one that stood out far above the rest — possibly combined. The Justie for the Most Addicting Social Media Outlet goes to Twitter. I wasn’t the only one addicted either. Not only did twitt rank as one of the years ‘buzzwords’, but now CNN even takes comments — and in some cases breaking news — from Twitter.

Strangest Nuance in a City I’ve Traveled To

This one is a tough one to call. I’ve been a number of places this year including Seattle, The Bahamas, New Orleans, Key West, North Carolina, Georgia and Utah. In those various places I’ve seen a fair share of strange things, like the odd traffic lights on the highway in Seattle, but by far the Strangest Nuance in a City I’ve Traveled To goes to Utah. Why Utah? Their numbering of streets is absolutely ridiculous. Everything is laid out in a grid, which makes sense, but that grid is far too large. For instance, we had to turn from S 700 E onto E 10600 S. Does that make any sense? Then, thrown into the middle of that was State St which does make sense. I don’t get it. Way to earn that Justie, Utah.

Coolest Thing of the Year

Despite all the crappy things that happened, 2008 had it’s share of some pretty cool things. Myron Rolle won a Rhodes Scholarship and I read Snow Crash, both pretty cool. The Dark Knight made a ton of money while the Devil Rays won the American League without any. Tiger Woods had the comeback of his career and Bill Gates ended his. All of these things are pretty cool, but only one can win the Award. The 2008 Justie for the Coolest Thing of the Year goes to The Olympics.

It was going to be pretty hard to beat the summer games. They began with the coolest Opening Ceremony ever performed (no video links available, stupid NBC) and included some unforgettable moments, a lot of which occurred in the pool. Michael Phelps won a record setting 8 gold medals, which will probably never happen again. Countless records were broken, smaller countries shined and for a few weeks in August the world actually came together and enjoyed each others company. You can’t really get much cooler than that.

All the Justies have been handed out and I’ve got nothing left for 2008. The ball will soon drop and bring in 2009. Let’s see what happens.

The first show is Saturday Night Live. To say SNL has writing issues is an understatement. The show has downright problems. In the two episodes that have aired so far there has been one sketch that was actually funny: the Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton season opener.

After watching the rest of the episode, and a majority of the one aired this past Saturday, it seems as if Tina Fey herself might have written this one. The SNL writing has been in trouble for a very long time and this season it just seems worse. It begs the question, will NBC grow a pair and clean out the write staff or *gasp* cancel the show?

The next show that makes me wonder what the writing team is thinking is Fringe. I’ve talked about Fringe before, it’s a great show that is part LOST and part X-Files. One of the main characters is a former mad scientist who has been locked up in a mental institution for the past 17 years. While most of the writing revolving this character is done well, there seems to be one “out” the team is using.

In the first episode Bishop, the character in question, wanted to use his lab from 17 years ago. Good thing it still exists! Harvard just decided to use it as storage. And by storage they meant cover the equipment with a tarp and put a few boxes in there. Convenient. In the second episode Bishop needed a file he left in his car. Well guess what? His car is in the same pad-locked garage it was 17 years ago! Again, how convenient? Finally, last night, Bishop needed a piece of equipment he hid in the wall of his former home. Well guess what. It was still there. But it wasn’t in a wall, it was in a dumbwaiter merely covered by a bookshelf. Do the writers really expect us to believe that the key to all of Bishop’s experiments are littered all over Boston and somehow completely untouched and right where they were left 17 years ago? Come on?

The final show I’ve watched so far this season has been Heroes. Cut to only 11 episodes last year because of the strike, it’s been a long time since Heroes has been on the air. But watching the two hour premiere on Monday, a few things struck me about one of the main characters, Peter.

Peter can absorb every power that he comes in contact with making him pretty much the most powerful “hero” of them all. Yet, somehow, Peter manages to constantly make poor decisions and, as a result, the world ends four to five years later. This season, future “Dark Peter” has come back from the future to prevent bad things from happening. But here’s what I don’t get: Dark Peter has a giant scar across his face. Lest we forget Peter has the ability to heal himself. Curious? Even more curious is that two of the powers Peter has absorbed involve being able to see the future. Given this, you would think Peter would know that his horrible choices have an effect down the road. Either that or the writers just assume we don’t remember these things.

None of these writing slips will cause me to stop watching the shows, well except maybe for SNL. But after waiting so long for good TV to come back on, I’d like to think the writers would be willing to not treat the audience like children and actually write the show without the sloppy “outs” they have been given themselves. Maybe it’s just been so long that I forgot this is the small screen norm and am being overly critical. If Toby shows up on The Office on Thursday I’ll know sloppy writing abounds.

What do you think? Have you noticed other instances of sloppy writing on TV so far this year? Leave it in the comments.

Like I said, I knew nothing going in which was probably a good thing. It turns out that Fringe is basically JJ Abrams does the X-Files, underground FBI division and all. Basically someone/thing has been running pseudo-science (fringe science) experiments on people across the world over the last year. Things like teleportation, regeneration, etc. The FBI is investigating and, of course, there is an evil corporation that seems to be behind it all.

There is an ensemble cast featuring Joshua Jackson of Dawson’s Creek fame, a guy from Band of Brothers, the guy who plays Abaddon on LOST, and a cow named Gene.

The pilot episode was really good ($10 million for TV makes that possible). It’ll be interesting to see where the show goes from here with normal episode budgets. It will also be interesting to see if Fringe actually answers questions or follows JJ’s other project and instead of providing answers somehow always seems to provide more questions. Either way, I’ve set the DVR to record Fringe weekly so I’ll ride the wave for awhile.

Did you watch Fringe? What did you think? Let me know in the comments.